12 Electronic Toy Robots of the 1980s

It was a fruitful time for robotic buddies and the toys that imitated them.

The decade of the 1980s witnessed a rare explosion in American robot mania. It led to the creation of personal home robots, such as the HERO, and a cavalcade of toy robots that were both functional and fanciful. You can thank George Lucas for that.

The wild popularity of sentient Star Wars droids like R2-D2 and C-3PO, when combined with the personal computer revolution, made the 1980s a fruitful time for robotic buddies and the toys that imitated them. People wanted to make real R2-D2s for themselves, and boy did they try.

By the end of the 1980s, Star Wars fever had died down and most people realized that sentient robot slaves were nowhere near possible with the technology of the time. Those factors led to much furrier robots in the 1990s that pretended to be household pets or mogwai...but we'll save that story for another time.

In the following slideshow, we'll take a look at 12 electronic robot toys—miniature cousins of the bigger home robots—that didn't just sit there looking pretty like a Transformer (ok, some of them sat there), but actually did stuff in an electronic, robotic way. When you're done reading, I'd love to hear about your favorite vintage robots in the comments.

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Tomy Dustbot

Tomy Dustbot

Tomy released a wide array of cute robot toys throughout the 1980s, most of which were built around a single, character-defining function. In this case, the Dustbotthe first robot with a built-in vacuum cleanerwas born to keep house. As he sucks up dust and dirt (really), his tiny arms "sweep" with a toy broom and dustpan. Decades before the Roomba, this autonomous bot even featured sensors to prevent it from falling off a table.